Voters Want Choices. And They Want to Be Heard

Krist Novoselic
// Published June 13, 2008
in
Seattle Weekly

I first became aware of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for single-seat
elections in 1997 and have been a strong advocate ever since.

The system is simple: Voters rank their candidates in order of
preference. Just as in traditional majoritarian voting, any candidate
getting over 50 percent of the vote is elected. If there's no majority,
instead of multiple ballots, there's an instant runoff. The last-place
candidates are eliminated. The voters who chose them have their second
or third rankings transferred to the remaining candidates until one
wins a majority.

There were practical considerations that
attracted me to this reform. Like most voters, I want more choices,
shorter election seasons, and less negative campaigning. RCV speaks to
this need.

After the 2000 election, RCV gained traction as a
solution to the notion of "wasted votes": Voters are urged not to
choose the candidate they prefer because it will split the vote and
throw the election to an undesirable outcome. Wasted-vote rhetoric only
discourages meaningful participation.

Some people think that a
rock bass player, just by advocating participation in voting, can get
voters to turn out. This is not so. Competitive elections of their own
accord make people interested in participating. Look at the current
presidential primaries: People are attracted because they feel their
voice can be heard.

Ranked Choice Voting is not a new idea. It
has been held constitutional and has a long history in our nation. It
is more a forgotten idea. But this is changing. The reform is
reemerging as an alternative to the two-round voting system used in
nonpartisan municipal elections. It can also work with partisan
elections.

Here is a (very brief) account of the history of Ranked Choice Voting:

In
the mid-19th century, the Industrial Revolution was transforming
society in developed nations. At the same time, the franchise of
democracy was spreading. There was a fear that the growing middle
class, being a majority of voters, would displace the landed
establishment in government. In the early 1860's, the influential
English thinker and Parliament member John Stuart Mill found a way to
accommodate majority rule while still giving the minority a voice. He
came across English barrister Thomas Hare's pamphlet "On The Election
Of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal."

In his
treatise, Hare was advocating the Single Transferable Vote (STV). Today
we call this Ranked Choice Voting. STV also is referred to as
Preferential Voting and the Hare/Clark Method. The system is called
Instant Runoff Voting when used in single-seat elections, and Choice
Voting (PR/STV) when used with multi-seat proportional representation.

It's
taken over 150 years for the Single Transferable Vote to start catching
on in the UK. Other English-speaking nations picked it up years ago.
Australia and Ireland were early converts to the system and still use
it to this day.

In the post-Civil War United States, the
enfranchisement of black males and an influx of European immigrants
threatened the balance of power. Again, the propertied establishment
was worried about class issues and the impact on suffrage.

The
South Carolina legislature considered Choice Voting to protect the
interests of white minorities during Reconstruction. They settled
instead on using the semi-proportional Cumulative Voting. After the
military left the state, plurality voting came back. The simple
barriers of literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, and violence
became the way to keep blacks out of power.

Between 1870 and
1900 more than 11 million European immigrants came to the U.S. Most of
them settled in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest. Political
parties met the needs of the new immigrants, thus cultivating loyalty.
These loyal voters were the base of powerful political machines which
dominated public offices.

As a reaction to the rule of the
party bosses, there were attempts to reform elections. In 1872,
majority Republicans in the New York legislature passed a bill
mandating Cumulative Voting for New York City. The Democratic governor
vetoed it.

Between 1890 and 1920, many progressive voting
reforms were put into practice. Women's suffrage, the direct election
of U.S. Senators, open primaries, ballot initiative and referendum,
home-rule municipal charters, and nonpartisan elections are still with
us today. Choice Voting was among the reforms adopted. Choice Voting
took hold in New York City along with cities in Ohio, Massachusetts,
and other places. Oregonians amended their state constitution to
explicitly accommodate it.

The system did what it was supposed
to do: give voters more choices by giving them the ability to rank
candidates. Voters were no longer stuck if they happened to live in a
ward or district dominated by one party, and could choose women,
independents, or racial minorities without splitting a constituency at
the polls.

Mill and Hare envisioned the minority
representation, but in the sense of protecting gentry from the masses.
With Choice Voting in the U.S., minority representation came true, but
in a way that helped folks who were usually excluded from democratic
institutions.

At first, opponents of Choice Voting went to
court with various suits. They claimed it violated the equal protection
clause of the 14th Amendment. But the federal courts disagreed, and
Choice Voting was upheld as legal. That meant opponents needed to mount
repeal efforts. In most places there was a ballot question calling for
repealing Choice Voting every time there was an election! Even though
voters repeatedly turned it down, the same repeal question appeared on
the ballot faithfully, year after year.

After World War II, the Cold War and racial issues came into
prominence. In some of the cities using the system, blacks were getting
elected and their opponents made an issue of racial block voting. In
New York during the height of the Red Scare, of couple of Communist
Party members were elected to the city council. Opponents decried
Choice Voting as Stalinist and un-American. It was these charges,
unrelenting repeal efforts, and voters' forgetting why the system was
implemented in the first place, that led to successful repeals. By
1960, all cities except for Cambridge, Mass., had repealed Choice
Voting.

Perhaps the Single Transferable Vote, in the form of Instant Runoff
and proportional Choice Voting systems, was before its time. This fall
voters in Memphis, Tenn., St. Paul Minn., and Glendale, Ariz., will be
considering the reform. These ballot measures have a great chance of
winning. Thirteen out of 14 such measures have won in the past few
years. Last week, the Colorado legislature passed a law allowing all
municipalities and special districts to use Instant Runoff Voting and
Choice Voting.

It looks like Ranked Choice Voting's time might be coming after all.

(Most of the historical information in this article was taken from Kathleen L. Barber's Proportional Representation & Electoral Reform in Ohio and A Right To Representation.)